I direct your attention to this post: http://e621.net/post/show/196451/

Now, according to ippiki ookami, the tags "my_little_pony" / "friendship_is_magic" do not apply to this image. Yet it is obviously fanart of my little pony, and particularly, the friendship is magic style of my little pony. Furthermore, RedFoxen gives proof that the artist even labelled it as such on the original source upload.

Now, search "my_little_pony original_character" and see many full pages of content that includes, in many cases solo/without an official character (which would apparently be the only case in which the "my_little_pony" tag should exist on the image according to ippiki), original MLP characters in the exact same vein as Maple Whisper in the aforementioned post.

In my opinion, this whole "tag only what you see" thing is getting, as noted in the title, ridiculous. At this rate, it'll get to the point at which "who knows if that orange pony with 3 apples as her cutiemark and with blonde hair and a cowboy hat and green eyes is really Applejack? Who knows it's not a random horse character that just so happens to have all those features?"

"Who are we to assume that this yellow mouse with pointy ears and red cheeks that uses electricity is actually the Pokemon character, Pikachu? We really shouldn't use the tags 'Nintendo', 'Pokemon' or 'Pikachu' on this image. Even if the artist in the original source states that it's definitely Pikachu fanart, who are we to assume that it is indeed Pikachu, even then, and not a completely unrelated character who happens to be a yellow mouse with the very same physical features as Pikachu?"

Perhaps those exmaples are a bit too extreme. Perhaps never would this site reach that point. But at this rate -- if a green pony, drawn in the style of MLP: FiM, using the naming conventions of MLP, who is as stated by the artist an MLP: FiM fan-character, is 'in no way related to My Little Pony and might as well just be a random green horse' -- then exactly what point WILL the site reach?

Let's say someone very much loves the Pikachu character, to use the same example as before. Let's say there exists many wonderful, well-crafted pieces of art of a Pikachu fan-character that looks identical to the average Pikachu as seen in official art, but has a little tuft of blue hair on his head. Let's say that said person who loves the character would get a big kick out of that art and would love the fan-character, and the skill of the artist who devleoped it, and would become a major fan of that artist if they were to find them. Maybe, by luck, they would have found the artist on e621 by searching 'pikachu' every once in awhile, and for the sake of my argument let's just assume that that would have been the only way this guy would've found that artist. But given the way things are going, what's the difference between a green pony that's obviously an MLP: FiM fancharacter and a pikachu with blue hair that's obviously a Pokemon/Nintendo fancharacter? Why would you tag a random yellow mouse with a sprig of blue hair 'pikachu' etc? And thus, the guy who loves Pikachu never does happen upon that art or artist.

I'm just sayin'. I have endured this whole "tag what you" see convention for the longest and I understand, really, what's important about it as far as physical things present in the image, even if the artist CLAIMS this creature that is by all visual accounts a male dog in a given image is actually an alien herm from the planet Zorbulon. But at this rate, it's coming to a point at which the whole existence of green tags to begin with is starting to come into question. I'm wondering at this point whether you should remove them altogether or start to rethink some intricacies of your rules.

(P.S. also there's the fact that many people might, for example, have 'my_little_pony' blacklisted that don't want to see art in this style or from that fandom at all, but don't want to have to blacklist the 'pony' tag as perhaps they may love realistic anthro ponies that truly have nothing to do with MLP, for example)

tl;dr: if a character that is obviously, visually drawn to be a fan-character from a specific IP, and the artist him/herself claims it to be so, is it really okay to defy anyone the right to tag the IP said character is based on? And if so, where does this road stop?

I'm not sure why it isn't tagged MLP, as it should be. I believe the friendship_is_magic is only relegated to characters from the show though.

Also, been a while.

DragonRanger said:
I'm not sure why it isn't tagged MLP, as it should be. I believe the friendship_is_magic is only relegated to characters from the show though.

Also, been a while.

No, it shouldn't.

Like Ippiki said in the comments, style doesn't make a character relate to a series, wether it is MLP, Sonic, Looney Tunes, or whatever.

Series are trademarks, and all characters of a series are trademarked. This is a sufficient reason to NOT relate to a serie a fan-made character.

Also FYI, cutie marks are trademark of hasbro.

I've also thought that OC in style of mlp should count as my_little_pony, but not friendship_is_magic, judging by amounts of pictures tagged this way. Good to know that this is wrong.
But, would cutie mark automatically make OC related to mlp?

Edit:
nvm question. I didn't see an edit of previous post when I was posting that.

anomaly said:
I've also thought that OC in style of mlp should count as my_little_pony, but not friendship_is_magic, judging by amounts of pictures tagged this way. Good to know that this is wrong.
But, would cutie mark automatically make OC related to mlp?

Cutie marks are a distinguishable enough part of the series to warrant tagging the character(s) as mlp, to a degree. Not everything with two tattoo-like markings on their hips are going to be tagged as cutie_mark. Just use your best judgement. And if the characters aren't in the show, they don't get the fim tag.

Well that just makes it all the more difficult to get rid of the pony tag...

Hammie said:
Well that just makes it all the more difficult to get rid of the pony tag...

We're not trying to get rid of pony tags. We're just trying to tag things objectively and logically.

It does seem silly to me not to tag fan-ponies as MLP, since I (having seen lots of MLP fanart while browsing, but never actually watched the show) look at that post and immediately recognize it as MLP, whether it's an official character or not. I think "tag what you'd expect the average joe to recognize" is a good rule of thumb. This also applies to the incest discussion earlier, where someone suggested essentially (or so I interpreted it): if John Q. Nonfurry would recognize the characters as being related, tag it.

The purpose of tags are to help people find images, so it only makes sense to tag the obvious, even if it's not necessarily visible. Otherwise it gets to like the OP was saying - how do you know that character is Pikachu and not some fan character whose only noticeable difference is obscured? Or in this case, how does a non-MLP-fan know that the pictured character isn't an official pony? Think of someone looking for that picture (maybe they found a crappy version on Google and wanted the original); they're going to search for MLP, and if they don't find it, they're going to consider the tagging system to have failed its purpose.

RenaKunisaki said:
It does seem silly to me not to tag fan-ponies as MLP

We do. We just don't tag them as friendship is magic. The difference between most of them and the one in question here is there is nothing in the image linking it to mlp.

Makes sense to me. Just because someone draws a deer in the same art style as the original concept art for Krystal and Fox McCloud does not entitle the use of a "starfox" tag for the picture.

Art styles do not equal tagging rights.

If that was the case, Xin-Wei and Wolfy-Nail would have the same tags due to a similar art style lately.

ippiki_ookami said:
We're not trying to get rid of pony tags. We're just trying to tag things objectively and logically.

You thoroughly misunderstood me, which is understandable since I was talking about a discussion in a different thread:
http://e621.net/forum/show/44008

I just want to throw in my two scents for consideration.

Just as a note, not everything that is tagged can be directly verifiable in the actual image. However these are very far and few such as character/artist names, year of publication, or the slippery "incest" tag.

As is with cutie mark versus flank tattoo or other distinguishing characteristics. [As ippiki said] Sometimes you just have to use your best judgement.

Advocating the detachment of the pony style from the MLP tag may open a Pandora's Box. That'll push pony pictures past people's blacklists. I anticipate butthurt users complaining about how 'out of hand' this 'pony fad' has gotten. Why, you'll make green horses normal. Truly it will be a sign of the end times.

TL;DR: I'm against tagging post #196451 as mlp and I'm against tagging mlp-style images as mlp.

I decided to do a comparison against the tagging of sonic_the_hedgehog, which is also widely recognized for a particular style of character design.

In my opinion, the number of pictures tagged as a Sonic picture without a recognizable character from the series actually in the picture is low enough to be described as approximately zero, to within experimental error. Sure, the occasional mistag slips into the result set, but it's pretty clean (and Sonic was once very popular image fodder, especially for homosexual porn).

I'll admit that it's tempting to say post #196451 cribs the mlp character style well enough to be tagged mlp. I concede the temptation because when I looked at the post, mlp was the first thing that sprang to mind, and I honestly wouldn't know that character from a genuine mlp character if someone lied to me. But then I think that if I were tag searching for mlp, because I liked mlp and wanted to see erotic pictures of it, I would want mlp characters, not mlp-styled "URIGINOL AVATAR DONT STEIL (BUT PLEEZ FAP)".

People who hate ponies that much can blacklist equine, or horse, or both, or more. I do, and I still find plenty of new images on the front page each time I visit the site. mlp isn't about to consume the site, and never has been.

I'm also against any movement to start tagging styles. That's the real Pandora's Box. It's subjective. Artists styles also change over time as they continue to learn and grow as artists. And finally, we simply don't have a precedent for tagging when an image cribs a recognizable style.

oc_pony
original_the_pony

Adrian_Blazevic said:
oc_pony
original_the_pony

This seems like the proper direction for tagging original characters loosely related to a series or other existing intellectual property.

354 uploads currently tagged with original_character

Of course that then begs the question, I suppose, of "do all characters not related to some sort of commercial or other well known IP get tagged as original"?

Azazial said:
Of course that then begs the question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Pet peeve.

Azazial said:
This seems like the proper direction for tagging original characters loosely related to a series or other existing intellectual property.

354 uploads currently tagged with original_character

Of course that then begs the question, I suppose, of "do all characters not related to some sort of commercial or other well known IP get tagged as original"?

No, because then that would be almost every furry character on this site. This tag is used for pony characters that are based off of MLP but are not from the show and have been created by a fan. Although this tag is like 99% MLP in nature, I suppose the same could apply to original sonic or Pokemon characters.

Rainbow_Crash said:
No, because then that would be almost every furry character on this site. This tag is used for pony characters that are based off of MLP but are not from the show and have been created by a fan. Although this tag is like 99% MLP in nature, I suppose the same could apply to original sonic or Pokemon characters.

You are so horrendously incorrect on this statement that its almost shattering the fifth dimension. "Original Characters" AKA Fan characters; have been around since the early dawn of sonic; any character that appears to be drawn for, or into the style of a show, or to assume position of not within that show or assimilate into its community {I could go on and on with these, but I think you get my point} but is in itself Not a canon cast member of the show {Never appears in any official media}, it is tagged with "Original_Character". MLP Given its immense popularity boon, just happens to be the most prevalent; while pokemon tend to be...hard to tag like this, as their almost gurenteed to look exactly like normal pokemon, while sonic "originals" tend to be little more then sonic or knuckles pallet swaps.

also, as a subnote, MLP has been around far earlier then "Most" series on here, including digimon, pokemon, starfox, and sonic; it was simply not as popular as it is today given its extremely girly nature in comparison to the boys commercial toy line "Transformers". I'm more surprised that it isn't one of the holders for most drawn anthros up beside disney cartoon classics and hanna barberas early works.

I strongly favor my_little_pony for characters which appear to be set in the my little pony universe. that is to say, horse characters with thick, chunky hooves, of wildly unrealistic colors, with markings on their flanks that are obviously of a tattoo like design ( the last 2 pages of my_little_pony -friendship_is_magic gives illustration of this.

I do not suppport a tag for original characters in the my little pony setting. The reason for this is that while friendship is magic has, perhaps, 200 characters with more than one post to their names, all based upon, theoretically, canon characters--that is, characters in the show, even if just as a background pony with 3 seconds of screen time and no speaking lines.

In comparison, there were 72 different "my little pony" toys released between 1981 and 1984. and 1981 only had 2 toys. Now, while some of these toys are 'duplicate characters' for the most part, every toy is a new character with a new design. and in later years, there were even more toys per year made. Year 4 had 74 toys in and of itself. and those are only the american releases. Many countries around the world had exclusive releases, had 'different versions' of the same character (that is to say, different colors, for some reason). my little pony has produced toys CONSTANTLY since 1981. That is longer then I've been alive, folks. That's a LOT of toys, that's a LOT of characters. I don't trust myself to reliably be able to tell if someone is paying homage to an old character, or making up a new original character. I don't think anyone else wants to as well.

Which is why I support "my little Pony" for all "my little pony" seeming characters, and save "friendship is magic" for characters who come from the show itself.

In my perfect world, there would be tags for all the OTHER shows and movies, but, I'll be honest, I don't know the older gens well enough at ALL to even start doing that, but there's a LOT of episodes and movies. So my_little_pony will have to do for all the Minty's and Gusty's and Twilight-the-first-gen and rainbow-dash-who-always-dresses-in-style and Sweet stuff and snowflake and so on and so forth.

tl;dr - there is a lot of my_little_pony that isn't friendship_is_magic, and I don't think we have anyone who can tell every OC from older gen characters, of which there are MANY. So I thik all non-fim character should be tagged MLP.

If nothign else, there SHOULD be a tag applied to all of them, so that people can blacklist. (I just think that tag should be my_little_pony.)

null0010 said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Pet peeve.

You are the bestest toaster ever.

Yes I think it should be tagged. It's in the style of the show, just don't add the FIM tag.

It seems there's a division between the "Lets tag MLP but not FIM" people and the "Stay away from a MLP tag altogether" people. But then that begs the question on weather images like these http://e621.net/post/show/53512/ merit a Sonic tag. The only link to this character and the Sonic the Hedgehog series is the blatantly familiar art style. I think that if an artist's style deviates into that of another fandom, it can rightfully be labeled as a general character of that series.

I also think that tagging mlp, but not tagging fim would be good. I think it's useful for searching/blacklisting and, correct me if I wrong, that's the main reason of tagging.
And it's not like that changing it would remove personal judgment from tagging, but it would place it somewhere else. From is it mlp style or not to is it cutie mark or just a tatoo.
And if not, it would be good if there was some wiki entry about that fan made characters should not be automatically tagged by series. Judging by the size of mlp -fim -cutie_mark I'm not the only person who didn't knew that and I don't see it explained anywhere but here.

Rainbow_Crash said:
I just want to throw in my two scents for consideration.

Just as a note, not everything that is tagged can be directly verifiable in the actual image. However these are very far and few such as character/artist names, year of publication, or the slippery "incest" tag.

As is with cutie mark versus flank tattoo or other distinguishing characteristics. [As ippiki said] Sometimes you just have to use your best judgement.

This about summarizes my opinion. "tag what you see" is a good rule, but it only works 99% of the time, so it can't be applied 100% of the time.

Y'know, I have to ask because this has been bothering me every time a topic complaining about the rules comes up...

If you don't like one of the rules so much, why are you still coming to the site? Not even trolling, I'm genuinely curious. If you don't like how the ice cream shop scoops the chocolate, do you just complain at the person endlessly or do you just take your business elsewhere? You aren't being forced to use the site and you haven't signed a contract, so...it boggles the mind why people just sit here and complain about something so extremely simple and not just use another site without this rule.

Blaziken said:
Y'know, I have to ask because this has been bothering me every time a topic complaining about the rules comes up...

If you don't like one of the rules so much, why are you still coming to the site? Not even trolling, I'm genuinely curious. If you don't like how the ice cream shop scoops the chocolate, do you just complain at the person endlessly or do you just take your business elsewhere? You aren't being forced to use the site and you haven't signed a contract, so...it boggles the mind why people just sit here and complain about something so extremely simple and not just use another site without this rule.

I guess because certain rules can cause problems for people, which is why some rules change every now and then. But a basic rule such as "tag what you see" can't possibly cause enough problems for it to be an issue. People seem to want MLP tagged a certain way so they can blacklist it. If certain stuff isn't getting blacklisted, change your blacklist or don't click the thumbnail. I don't know what kind of monitor you guys are using but mine is 18 inches, so 90% of the time, I can tell from the thumbnail if the picture is something i'd want to look further into. If some stuff getting blacklisted that you want to see, either change your blacklist or do without. If this is the wrong thread for this, I just woke up.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not complaining, just adding my opinions into the mix. Just because e621 is great doesn't mean it can't be improved. (In fact, fear that my suggestions and opinions will be mistaken for complaints and bossiness is something that always bugs me... >.>)

RenaKunisaki said:
I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not complaining, just adding my opinions into the mix. Just because e621 is great doesn't mean it can't be improved. (In fact, fear that my suggestions and opinions will be mistaken for complaints and bossiness is something that always bugs me... >.>)

I wasn't specifically talking about you, I was talking about OP and the bevy of other topics/comments saying basically the exact same thing.

Also, there's a difference between 'improving' and 'incessantly whining'. Suggesting something once, getting a response, then letting the topic drop/getting it worked on and fixed is 'improving'. Making shittons of topics that are basically a copy/paste, going on tag vandalism sprees, screaming and bawling in comments? That's 'incessantly whining'.

@Blaziken
Lets make it clear. I don't like this site. I love this site! And I didn't see here much hate for rules in general, so why are you asking?

I don't know what is wrong in expressing your opinion on rule which is not known by one admin, and not supported by another. Rule "tag what you see", is a short one, and as most short rules, very ambiguous, and with many exceptions. There are 2 views on a problem what make picture connected to mlp tag, and IMO both sides have their pros and cons. And it's not like I would leave this site if it was said that it should be the other way I think. There are many things I think are wrong on this site, but I still love it, so why do you write, as all people who have their own opinion, and want to share it, so the site could be better are complaining and whining?

anomaly said:
@Blaziken
Lets make it clear. I don't like this site. I love this site! And I didn't see here much hate for rules in general, so why are you asking?

I don't know what is wrong in expressing your opinion on rule which is not known by one admin, and not supported by another. Rule "tag what you see", is a short one, and as most short rules, very ambiguous, and with many exceptions. There are 2 views on a problem what make picture connected to mlp tag, and IMO both sides have their pros and cons. And it's not like I would leave this site if it was said that it should be the other way I think. There are many things I think are wrong on this site, but I still love it, so why do you write, as all people who have their own opinion, and want to share it, so the site could be better are complaining and whining?

This is more of a global statement concerning the whole TWYS issue. For a long time people cannot get it through their heads that you tag only what your eyes perceive in the picture. The comment I made was more general than just the MLP issue, I only posted it in this because it was tangentially related.

As for you seeing not much hate, I guess we look in different places. It seems like every time I come on here there's someone screaming and crying over the TWYS rule, and I've seen many a user banned for tag vandalism and tag warring over the simplest shit in the book.

Also, as I said there's a difference between sharing your opinion and demanding the site cater to your whims, which is what 90% of the TWYS whiners tend to do.

Blaziken said:
This is more of a global statement concerning the whole TWYS issue. For a long time people cannot get it through their heads that you tag only what your eyes perceive in the picture. The comment I made was more general than just the MLP issue, I only posted it in this because it was tangentially related.

As for you seeing not much hate, I guess we look in different places. It seems like every time I come on here there's someone screaming and crying over the TWYS rule, and I've seen many a user banned for tag vandalism and tag warring over the simplest shit in the book.

Also, as I said there's a difference between sharing your opinion and demanding the site cater to your whims, which is what 90% of the TWYS whiners tend to do.

As a here I meant this topic. I know that there are many idiots here, but no one in this topic appears to be especially rude, or to vandalize tags, so I don't know why you posted it here.

anomaly said:
As a here I meant this topic. I know that there are many idiots here, but no one in this topic appears to be especially rude, or to vandalize tags, so I don't know why you posted it here.

This is a Tag What You See complaint. My opinion was based on the Tag What You See whining. 1+1.

yeaaaah... last TWYS whiner tried to change the site to her view of the rule. she only lasted a couple of months after she started her own crusade...
Basically, if you dont like the tags, or the rules, there are other sites to go to out there. coming here and complaining about it will only get 2 things, anger, and drama. well three, if your loud enough about it you'll get a spanking from the admin.

Blaziken said:
This is more of a global statement concerning the whole TWYS issue. For a long time people cannot get it through their heads that you tag only what your eyes perceive in the picture. The comment I made was more general than just the MLP issue, I only posted it in this because it was tangentially related.

As for you seeing not much hate, I guess we look in different places. It seems like every time I come on here there's someone screaming and crying over the TWYS rule, and I've seen many a user banned for tag vandalism and tag warring over the simplest shit in the book.

Also, as I said there's a difference between sharing your opinion and demanding the site cater to your whims, which is what 90% of the TWYS whiners tend to do.

Interestingly enough, the TWYS rule usually doesnt result in fights over the "style" of a picture, but usually in arguments over character "Gender"

Princess_Celestia said:
You are so horrendously incorrect on this statement that its almost shattering the fifth dimension. "Original Characters" AKA Fan characters; have been around since the early dawn of sonic; any character that appears to be drawn for, or into the style of a show, or to assume position of not within that show or assimilate into its community {I could go on and on with these, but I think you get my point} but is in itself Not a canon cast member of the show {Never appears in any official media}, it is tagged with "Original_Character". MLP Given its immense popularity boon, just happens to be the most prevalent; while pokemon tend to be...hard to tag like this, as their almost gurenteed to look exactly like normal pokemon, while sonic "originals" tend to be little more then sonic or knuckles pallet swaps.

also, as a subnote, MLP has been around far earlier then "Most" series on here, including digimon, pokemon, starfox, and sonic; it was simply not as popular as it is today given its extremely girly nature in comparison to the boys commercial toy line "Transformers". I'm more surprised that it isn't one of the holders for most drawn anthros up beside disney cartoon classics and hanna barberas early works.

That's what I just said; drawn in the style of an existing franchise but not actually in it.